Overview of antigenicities of human, chlamydia and mycoplasma HSP60 peptides from our study, in the context of results from other HSP60 epitope mapping studies.

<p>A similarity plot of 34 aligned HSP60 amino acid sequences (Fig. SF4 in file S1) is also included, scoring similarity with the EBLOSUM62 matrix and a sliding window of 10 amino acids, using the program Plotcon (at the EMBOSS web site). Peaks of conservation are labeled with the human HSP60 sequence variant. The X axis shows the position in the alignment. IgG and IgM binding peptides defined in the present paper are shown. Peptides which discriminated ME from non-ME patients and BD (in the Test set) are marked with asterisks. <i>Mycoplasma</i> HSP60 peptides are green, <i>Chlamydia</i> HSP60 peptides are yellow, human HSP60 peptide magenta. Results of others include epitopes recognized by normal human sera (Uray), crossreactive epitopes of human, <i>Chlamydia</i>, <i>E. coli</i> and <i>Mycobacterium</i> HSP60/65 recognized by sera of individuals with atherosclerosis (Perschinka), human HSP60 epitopes (black) selectively recognized in patients with coronary infarction (Wysocki), atherosclerosis (Metzler) and after Coxsackie A9 infection (Härkönen). P277 (Elias) is a human HSP60 peptide containing T and B cell epitopes. It was used in vaccination experiments with NOD mice. Previously reported chlamydia HSP60 epitopes are shown in yellow. A protective and diagnostically useful <i>Ehrlichia</i> peptide (red) and diagnostically useful <i>Orientia tsutsugamushi</i> St58 (dark gray) and <i>Brucella</i> HSP60 peptides (light gray) are also shown. Literature references are given below, and are further discussed in section 6 of File S1. Many of these peptide sequences are also shown in detail in Tables ST1-ST5, and in the alignment of Figure SF4 in file S1.